Hymn

“ They have opened the day with the psalm of Thy praise, with the anthem of Thy glory, with the hymn of Thy mercy, with the hosanna of Thy holiness. May they enjoy the day, as they have begun it, in adoring and worshipping Thee ! ”

“ The hymn of adoration lifts the soul into a higher plane, into a contemplation of the glory and majesty of the infinite perfections of its God in which self is forgotten and a consciousness of the infinitude of divine beauty, nobility, and spiritual elevation remains to thrill the soul. ”

“ Amidst trembling prayers, in the darkened room, in the presence of some sweet shrouded and coffined form, the memory of some soft sealed face and folded hands, and spirit for ever at rest, has rose the hymn into pensive rapture:
Are we not tending upward too,
As fast as time can move? ”

“ When my Lord comes I trust I shall
—through all the loving rotations of the crude hymn-tune. Such song-births of spiritual enthusiasm are beyond enumeration—and it is useless to hunt for author or composer. Under the momentum of a wrestling hour or a common rapture of experience, counterpoint was unthought of, and the same notes for every voice lifted pleading and praise in monophonic impromptu. ”

“ At intervals, from within the ancient, but still stately dwelling, the solemn hymn, in honor of the noble dead, would swell in full chorus, and the rich melody would almost lead the soul of the listener to the heaven to which it directed its thoughts. ”

“ To present each hymn with its tune appeared the natural and most satisfactory way, as in most cases it is impossible to dissociate the two. The melody is the psychological coëfficient of the metrical text. Without it the verse of a seraph would be smothered praise. Like a flower and its fragrance, hymn and tune are one creature, and stand for a whole value and a full effect. ”

“ Teach our faint desires to rise
above the dullest levels of devotion. There should be in a hymn a restrained fervour, a reverent rapture of poetic inspiration free from all admixture of the sensuous and morbidly emotional. ‘Be not drunken with wine ... but be filled with the Spirit.’
Quench then the altar-fires of your old gods,
Quench not the fire within. [29]
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Nay, rather, if we find no ‘minstrel rapture’ for the praise of the Most High, may we not ask with Charles Wesley—
Why breaks not out the fire within,
In flames of joy, and praise, and love? ”

“ When sacred grass is trimmed to aid the auspicious work, or the hymn makes its voice of praise sound to the sky. Where the stone rings as 'twere a singer skilled in laud,--Indra in truth delights when these come near to him. ”

“ Sent on the blast a hymn of jubilee;
With her lit eye, and long hair floating free,
Queen-like she stood, and glorious was the strain,
E'en as instinct with the tempestuous glee
Of the dark waters, tossing o'er the slain. ”

“ In so far as a hymn is a transcript of a genuine conviction, intensified by emotion, or of a profound experience, it is literature. There have gone into it vision, feeling, imagination, sincerity, intimate experience—an appropriation of the influences life offers a soul that gazes upon it with wide-open eyes. It is not the measure or the rhyme that makes literature of a hymn. A bald formulation in metrical form of doctrines dissected by metaphysical processes may be called a hymn by courtesy, but it is not literature any more than would be a textbook on mathematics. ”

“ It is cleft in two by bereavement, and out of the rift comes forth, as by resurrection, the form and voice that shall never die out of the world. Angels sat at the grave's mouth; and so hymns are the angels that rise up out of our griefs and darkness and dismay.
"Thus born, a hymn is one of those silent ministers which God sends to those who are to be heirs of salvation. It enters into the tender imagination of childhood, and casts down upon the chambers of its thought a holy radiance which shall never quite depart. ”

“ The Angelic Hymn
Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will toward men. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, O Lord God, Heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.
O Lord, the Only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sin of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us. ”

“ A hymn is a singing angel, and goes walking through the earth, scattering the devils before it. Therefore he who creates hymns imitates the most excellent and lovely works of our Lord God, who made the angels. ”

“ And alway since then they have been diligently practicing, till now, when Dame Nature calls for Te Deum at the day-dawn, or for a vesper hymn at eventide, marvelous is the melody of gleesome and gay-hearted little birds; marvelous is the skill of the musician wind, as he sweeps the forest-organ’s answering keys; marvelous are the voices of cloud and cataract, and marvelous the voices of the sea. ”

“ You cannot hear the melody of ethereal harps, attuned to unending praise. But they in whose hearts early piety was implanted by your prayers, who learned from your lips to warble the sacred hymn at eve, swell that exulting strain. ”

“ In glory yet to come;
O idle grief, O foolish tears,
When Jesus calls us home!
344. P. M.
Mrs. Hemans.
The Cry of the Afflicted.
1 Lowly and solemn be
Thy children’s cry to Thee,
Father divine!
A hymn of suppliant breath,
Owning that life and death
Alike are Thine.
2 O Father, in that hour
When earth all helping power
Shall disavow;
When spear, and shield, and crown,
In faintness are cast down,
Sustain us Thou! ”

“ Our choral harmony, in hymns of praise.
Father of Heav'n! in whom our hopes confide,
Whose pow'r protects us and whose precepts guide;
In life our guardian, and in death our friend,
Glory supreme be Thine, till time shall end. ”

“ The great doctrines of Christianity loom up in their dignity and majestic sweep, in their adequacy to the highest and deepest needs of the human soul. The spontaneous hymn is but a cry of astonished delight, of exalted inspiration, of self-forgetful contemplation of the revealed glory, an instinctive appeal to other souls to share the rapture of the vision. ”

“ But a hymn in which the hurried pulse and the throbbing heartbeat of deep human feeling can be felt is genuine literature, a revelation of human personality and of the collective life of which it is representative. ”

“ The structural qualities which constitute a true hymn are few and readily understood. Since a hymn must above all things be potent over the hearts and imagination of all the people, its diction must be vernacular—simple words of one and two syllables. Since a hymn must be singable by all the people in concert, its metrical flow must be short and rhythmical. In aesthetic qualities a hymn should be simple but beautiful in thought, sentiment and imagery. ”

“ Every hymn, if it is only sincerely felt, will lend wings to the souls of the simple folk who sing it; and whatever ascends to Heaven from the inmost depths of the heart, can hardly displease the dear God, to whom it is addressed. ”

“ This admirable hymn excels in simplicity of composition, closeness of connection, and uniformity of sentiment; breathing the pious effusions of a devout mind, deeply impressed with a conviction of God's mercies to herself in particular, and of his providential government of the world in general; exalting the poor in spirit or the humble-minded, and abasing the rich and the arrogant; rewarding the righteous, and punishing the wicked. ”

“ All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women’s voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accents of children,—voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. ”

“ Ye to that bounteous path of yours, ye mighty, have ever borne away our thoughts with horses, Mind-swift and full of vigour, that the trouble of man who offers gifts might cease and slumber. 4. So ye, when ye have yoked your chariothorses, come to the hymn of the most recent singer. Our true and ancient Herald Priest shall bring you, the Youthful, bearing splendour, food, and vigour. 5. With newest hymn I call those Wonder-Workers, ancient and brilliant, and exceeding mighty, Bringers of bliss to him who lauds and praises, bestowing varied bounties on the singer. ”

“ The hymn, the tune, the style, are each too closely associated with to be easily separated from herself, and when sung in one of her most animated moods, in the open air, with the utmost strength of her most powerful voice, must have been truly thrilling. ”

“ A hymn must have a beginning, middle, and end. There should be a manifest graduation in the thoughts, and their mutual dependence should be so perceptible that they could not be transposed without injuring the unity of the piece; every line carrying forward the connection, and every verse adding a well-proportioned limb to a symmetrical body. ”

“ And yet nevertheless, for the comforting of such as delight in music, it may be permitted, that in the beginning or in the end of Common Prayer, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or such like song, to the praise of Almighty God, in the best melody and music that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence of the hymn may be understood and perceived. ”

“ This hymn, which has such an important place in the yearly celebration of the Nativity, is a free rendering of the latter part of Psalm 98: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.” ”

“ The Hymn is the forehead, as before in the case of heaven. The object of its praise is the eye, and the eighty verses (of the hymn) are food, for by means of food he obtains everything.
13. The eighty verses (of the hymn) are alike food with reference to the gods as well as with reference to man. For all these beings breathe and live by means of food indeed. By food (given in alms, &c.) he conquers this world, by food (given in sacrifice) he conquers the other. Therefore the eighty verses (of the hymn) are alike food, with reference to the gods as well as with reference to man. ”

“ thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and woe—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee and thine! ”

“ As forth to sacrifice we go, a hymn to a hymn let us say, Who hears us even when afar; 2. Who, from of old, in carnage, when the people gathered, hath preserved His household for the worshipper. 3. And let men say, Agni is born, e'en he who slayeth Vrtra, he Who winneth wealth in every fight. ”

“ It seeks to explain, as far as possible, the origin of the words and music of every hymn in the Hymnary.
The great lyrics of the church, contributed by every age since the days of the apostles, are a precious heritage, and a source of inspiration and power. This work is intended to foster an understanding of and love for our hymns, new and old, and to stimulate the time-honored and blessed practice of congregational singing in the church today. ”

“ The following was adopted by The Hymn Society of America as its definition of a Christian hymn:
“A Christian hymn is a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is designed to be sung and which expresses the worshipper’s attitude toward God, or God’s purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it.”—Carl F. Price.
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“Some kinds of music are like mental and spiritual food. ”

“ An eminent Episcopal divine, (says the Christian Register,) one Trinity Sunday, at the close of his sermon, read three hymns by Unitarian authors: one to God the Father, by Samuel Longfellow, one to Jesus, by Theodore Parker, and one to the Holy Spirit, by N.L. Frothingham. “There,” he said, “you have the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
It is natural to speak of hymns as “poems,” indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. ”

“ I shall quote but little; for, although there is a sweet calm and a great justice of reflection and feeling, there is hardly anything of that warming glow, that rousing force, that impressive weight in his verse, which is the chief virtue of the lofty rhyme.
The best in a volume of ninety Hymns and Songs of the Church, is, I think, The Author's Hymn at the close, of which I give three stanzas. They manifest the simplicity and truth of the man, reflecting in their very tone his faithful, contented, trustful nature. ”

“ The hymn holds a premier place in the literature of poetry, but it is much more than poetry. “It belongs with the things of the spirit, in the sphere of religious experience and communion with God.” Some of the best hymns which have touched and transformed the depths of human life may not meet the tests of literary critics. ”

“ During those days of sadness the nation sang this familiar hymn which profoundly moved the popular heart. Possibly in all the history of the United States, the nation has never so unitedly joined in singing a particular hymn as during those days. It was a national tribute to a fallen leader. ”